Crime and Essentialism
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Regarding something as having an innate
existence or universal quality that cannot be
altered or changed; a rejection of social factors
as having an impact of the behavior of human
beings and the access people have within a
system.
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One of the earliest explanations of crime
Concerned with the size and shape of the skull
Popular from the mid 1700s to the mid 1800s
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Thought that three major regions of the
brain govern three types of behavior and
personality characteristics:
Intellectual
Moral
Lower-more prevalent in criminals
Because phrenologists could not directly
measure the three brain regions, they
reasoned that the size and shape of the
skull corresponded to the brain’s size and
shape
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Founder of the classical school of criminology
Founder of the positivist school
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Viewed criminals as “atavist” or throwbacks to
an earlier stage of evolution
Criminals were evolutionary accidents who
resembled primitive people more than modern
people
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Evidence came from
measurements of the
bodies of men in
Italian prisons that he
compared to his
measurements of the
bodies of Italiam
soldiers
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In his book The Female Offender (1895) he
wrote that women were more likely than men
to be atavists
Thought women had many traits in common
with children in that their “moral sense is
deficient”
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In 1939 published two
books that reported the
results of his
measurement of 14k male
prisoners and 3,200
control group subjects
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Determined that compared to
his control group, prisoners
tended to have low foreheads,
crooked noses, narrow jaws,
small ears, long necks and
stooped shoulders
Labeled criminals “organically
inferior” and “low grade
human organisms”
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Hooton
recommended that
governments could
reduce crime by
sterilizing criminals
or exiling them to
reservations
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body structure as a predictor of
criminality
Somatology-people’s body
shapes affect their personalities
and the crimes they commit
Endomorphs
Mesomorphs
ectomorph
*Genetic explanations
*Diet and Nutrition
*Neurochemical factors
*Early Puberty
*Pregnancy and Birth Complications